Sunday, January 25, 2015

The following is a (very slightly) edited version of an essay I wrote 6 or 7 years ago. If you find the ecological mind of interest (it goes quite a bit beyond social questions, which I address here), the work of Andy Clark is well worth checking out.

"Where does the mind begin and end?"

Daughter:Daddy, why do
things have outlines?

Father: Do they? I don’t
know. What sort of things do you mean?

D: I mean when I
draw things, why do they have outlines?

F: Well, what about
other sorts of things-a flock of sheep? or a conversation? Do they have
outlines?

D: Don’t be silly. I
can’t draw a conversation. I mean things.

(Bateson, 1972, p. 27)

Introduction

By
taking a functionalist view of the mind, this essay aims to challenge the
limitation of mind to individual humans. The phrase “boundaries of the mind”
could be interpreted as suggesting the question of whether or not we should
draw the line at individual people, or perhaps families or groups. Psychology
has certainly been accused of individualism (e.g. Tuffin, 2005). However, if
the debate is framed thus it still assumes that the study of mind should be
restricted to humans, when
mental phenomena can actually be studied in other species and even
non-organisms.

Through
the history of psychology, thinkers and trends (in psychology as well as other
disciplines and society at large) have facilitated the narrowing or broadening
of the study of the mind.

The
Mind

Pinker
defined the mind simply, calling it “a system of organs of computation” (1997,
p. xx). Reber & Reber (2001) pointed out that treating the concept of
“mind” as being interchangeable with concepts like the soul, the self or
identity only compounds the confusion.
But defining the mind is difficult, and various concepts have been
conflated with the mind over time. The mind should be viewed as a set of
processes, not a given process that is somehow separate from its various
constituent processes (Ryle, 1949).

Wilson (2004) suggested that for something to have a mind, or at least a
minimal mind, it must possess one psychological property. Furthermore, there
should be some physical structure that realises this property.

Functionalism

William James, in his Principles of
Psychology, espoused a functionalist approach to the mind:

The
pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus
the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon (1950, p.8).

James
was influenced by evolutionary theory, and functionalism is concerned with
what’s adaptive about the mind, i.e. how the mind helps thinkers adapt to and
exploit their environment (Gazzaniga & Heatherton,
2003). Functionalism can be contrasted with structuralism. Structuralism is
concerned with the how the constituent elements of experience in the mind.
While structuralism relied heavily on introspection and focused on the study of
“normal” humans, functionalism would use other methodologies and study the
behaviour of animals and the mentally ill (Hergenhahn, 1997).

Searle
(1992) challenged functionalism by arguing that the study of the mind is always
and everywhere concerned with consciousness (though few studies may
explicitly refer to it), and that a functional role is unnecessary for
consciousness. While the study of consciousness is a worthwhile endeavour,
Searle’s focus on the non-functional aspects of consciousness (which may not
exist anywhere else but within our personal “selves”-note the risk of solipsism)
positions the individual human as the sole owner of a mind.

The
Individual

The
roots of Western individuality, as in the focus on the individual, can be
traced back as far as the Renaissance, the introduction of private property in
the 13th century or even Ancient Greek philosophy. However, the
emergence of psychology as an autonomous discipline coincided with a great
increase in Western society’s emphasis on the individual (Jansz, 2004). The
belief that the “inner self” was truer than the public self became popular
between 1500 and 1800, as increasing mobility made it harder to ascertain the
identity of individuals just by looking at them (Tice & Baumeister, 2001).

Wundt
is often portrayed as a founding father of psychology, given his establishment
of the laboratory at Leipzig
(e.g. Gazzaniga & Heatherton, 2003). For a long time Wundt’s “Physiological
Psychology” was emphasised to the point of ignoring his “Psychology of the
People”. The latter work discussed the
importance of social and cultural phenomena that were not suitable for
laboratory study, and thus did nothing to further psychology’s status as a
natural science (Jones & Elcock, 2001). The lack of attention paid to
“Psychology of the People” helped to position the individual as the central
subject of psychology.

As a
discipline, psychology’s treatment of the research participant as an isolated
individual (as opposed to an individual in a particular situation) has been a
methodological symptom of an individualised society, but has also in turn lent
empirical credibility to this individualism (Danziger, 1990).

Mind, Body and Soul, Man and Beast

For
the ancient Hebrews, the soul was whatever it was that made the body alive. The
Pythagoreans argued that the soul could move from its original body to other
bodies following death. Plato granted the soul further autonomy by suggesting
it could exist in a disembodied state (c.f. Shaffer, 1968).

Robert
Whytt, with his discovery of spinal reflexes in the middle of the eighteenth
century, suggested that the soul or mind was located in the spine as well as
the brain. For many philosophers, this implied that the soul and the body were
closely enmeshed, and implied that simpler animals could also possessed
minds/souls (Reed, 1997). William James took this idea further with his
proposal that the psychological realm evolves as part of the natural world
(Reed, 1997).

Descartes,
an early proponent of dualism, is sometimes portrayed as viewing animals as
lifeless machines. The Cartesian evidence for having a mind is not just
communication (which many species are capable of), but communication that is
based “pure” thought, i.e. thought which is based on abstract symbols (Alanen,
2003). However, while Descartes argued that only humans were capable of pure
thought, he was willing to admit that clocks can keep time better than humans,
and other species may outwit us on occasion (Clarke, 2003). This seems to
suggest that Descartes supported the non-existence of minds in non-humans only
inasmuch as he took a relatively structural approach to the mind.

Nonetheless,
animals and even early humans have been described quite recently as zombies, as
they apparently lack(ed) language and culture (Malik, 2000). Animals may not
have cultures, but animal behaviour can be predicted by noticing what an animal
notices and finding out what the animal wants (Dennet, 1998).

Indeed,
as the cognitive revolution in human psychology took place, there was also a
renewal of interest in the study of cognitive phenomena in other species (although
a strong emphasis on behaviour understandably remained) (Roberts, 1998).
Although there is a lack of evidence that any other species can use language in
the recursive way that humans can, the cognitive abilities of chimpanzees and
young children are not very different (Harley, 2001). Where there are
differences, it is worth thinking the observation of Reed (1996), who argued
that philosophers frequently compare humans to other animals in terms of
internal properties, when they should instead be comparing how our environments
differ.

The Ecological and Social Mind

In
defining the boundaries of something, it seems like common sense to ask what is
inside and outside the object of study. What is inside or outside the mind? If
we take away what is outside the mind, then it has nothing to act on and no
subject matter for its thoughts (Gergen, 1999). From a functionalist
perspective, this would negate the mind’s very existence.

Gergen
(1999) argues that the mind is inseparable from relationships if we firstly
treat psychological discourse as performative and secondly embed performance in
relationships. From this point of view thinking is just a public act carried
out in private. Like Malik (2000), Gergen implies that thought is a linguistic
act, and that mental activity is driven by interpersonal relationships.

Many
critical social psychologists argue that identity is context-dependent. They
reject the essentialist view and advance the idea that identity is not
possessed but rather negotiated, and should be studied by investigating
discourse (Tuffin, 2005). What sets the (relatively new) practice of discursive
psychology apart from psychology as natural science is that it does not treat
the individual “subject” as being representative of universal human truths
(Tuffin, 2005). Psychology as natural science implicitly assumes that the mind
is located within the individual, and that findings on the mind of an
individual can be generalised to the minds of other individuals.

Discursive
psychology focuses on how language and speech acts behave, and does not offer a
window onto the workings of the mind (Parker, 2002). A comparison could be
drawn with Behaviourism, in that both practices avoid the use of cognitive
concepts in describing human interaction. Thus, an ecology of identity
does not necessarily support an ecology of mind, but rather can
undermine examination of the mind altogether.

Mind
may extend to our ecological environments, but what about our social groups?
Emphasising the needs or importance of groups is not the same thing as saying
that they have minds.

Wilson (2004) suggests that the group mind hypothesis, as he calls
it, can either be taken as the literal proposition that groups can have minds
or as a cognitive metaphor. The cognitive metaphor stance suggests that
although groups don’t actually have minds, they act sufficiently like
individuals to be treated as though they did. (Note that this framework still
treats individuals as the paradigmatic boundary of the mind).

Communities
of insects are considered to be “super-organisms”. The individual organisms do
not understand the aims of the group. The term “super-organism” cannot easily
be applied to human groups, however: the individuals within the group are
typically aware of the aims of the group, even though they may only play a
minute role in achieving such aims (Wilson,
2004).

In
other disciplines one can see the concern with the validity of reducing the
decisions etc. of the group to the aggregate of those of the individuals who
make up the group. In macroeconomics, for example, the KeynesianSchool
argues that investors are prone to “herd behaviour”, with the herd acting as a
metaphorical group mind. In contrast, the NewClassicalSchool proposes that
people react to the prevailing economic conditions as autonomous individuals,
so the unemployment rate, G.D.P. etc. can be explained solely in terms of the
thoughts and actions of individuals (Snowden & Vane, 2005).

The
Artificial Mind

The
“mind as computer” metaphor has pervaded psychology for at least four centuries
(Reed, 1996). Conversely, do computer have minds? Functionalism argues that
functionally identical acts can be carried out by different physical entities
(Bem & de Jong, 1997), so theoretically there is no reason why silicon
can’t do the work of flesh and blood.

Strong
artificial intelligence is the hypothesis that a computer which carries out a
cognitive task is, in fact, thinking (Kukla & Walmsley, 2006).
Structurally, the brain is in many ways different from an artificial computer (c.f.
Jaki, 1969). However, the Turing machine demonstrates that thought can be
carried out computationally (Pinker, 1997).

Kukla
et al. (2006) argue that, from a functionalist perspective, strong artificial
intelligence is supported if a computer can perfectly simulate human cognition.
This argument is quite anthropocentric, in that it assumes that the carrying
out of a cognitive task is an insufficient demonstration of mind unless it
is done in exactly the same way as a human would. Surely a truly
functionalist approach should support the existence of some kind of mind in
anything that can carry out a given cognitive task, regardless of how it goes
about it? Turing machines do not have the same structure as the brain (Dawson, 1998). Turing’s point
was not to demonstrate that a machine can think in exactly the same way humans
do. Rather, it was that if the machine can fool a human into thinking it’s a
human mind in a blind test, then it has mind (Dennet, 1998).

Indeed,
if we are concerned with what is adaptive about mind, we should focus on
what constitutes adaptiveness for beings with artificial intelligence. Meyer
(1996) argues that a behaviour is adaptive for a robot if it allows the robot
to continue performing the function for which it was designed. The workings of
swarms of social insects have influenced robot designers to produce systems of
robots that work together without centralised control or explicit communication
(Kube & Zhang, 1993).

A
classic argument against strong artificial intelligence is attributed to Lady
Lovelace, who complained that Charles Babbage’s “analytical engine” could only
generate ideas that it was programmed to. Turing (1950) refuted this view with
two points. Firstly, humans require teaching in order to produce “novel” ideas,
so it is inconsistent to set a higher criterion for mind in computers, given
that it is assumed that humans have minds. Secondly, according to Turing, producing
novel ideas is simply a matter of engineering to make a computer produce more
than one idea for a given input. This may be setting the bar somewhat low, as
the programmer may be able to predict the two or more outputs perfectly, but it
is does require a great stretch of imagination to see how a computer can
generate random outputs but be programmed with somewhat “wooly” criteria for
which of these outputs to select as most aesthetically appealing.

The
Man with Two Brains

Perhaps
the human brain contains more than one mind. While one feels a cohesive state
of consciousness at any given time, there is no one brain structure that is
responsible for consciousness (Dennett, 1991, Greenfield, 1999). It is possible
that there is no central organiser within the brain that creates a “unified”
mind, but rather individual subsystems acting together as a sort of superorganism.
As the environment impinges on one, a “majority” view is reached among the
subsystems, and this view is expressed in overt behaviour (Dennett &
Humphries, 1998). This is perhaps a more structuralist argument against the
idea of one person, one mind.

Following
corpus colostomy, split-brain patients can only articulate pictures shown to
the right eye, as the left hemisphere controls speech (Gazzaniga &
Heatherton, 2003). It would appear that the two halves of the brain have
thoughts of their own. For the split-brain patient, the brain does not produce a
mind, but two minds!

Of
course, one should try to avoid excessive reductionism. An individual neuron
either fires or doesn’t, and so lacks psychological properties in the sense of Wilson’s (2004) “minimal
mindedness” criterion. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the neuron should
be considered a computer, given the variety of inputs it may have to process
(Jaki, 1969).

Discussion

The
discipline of psychology has emerged and developed beside other emerging and
established disciplines such as computing, theology, philosophy, economics and
ethology, and these disciplines have influenced one another. In the Western
world, individualism in society as well as its sciences and philosophies has
risked restricting the location of mind.

Although
thinkers such as Block (1978) have suggested that functionalism may lead us to too
liberal a view of mind, I believe that most people’s definition of mind is
excessively illiberal. Functionalism cannot give a complete account of the
human mind, or one that will satisfy our desire for an account of
consciousness. However, if one accepts that pursuing some aim is a sign of
mind, then it becomes clear that restricting the concept of mind to individuals,
humans or even organisms is misguided.

Monday, January 19, 2015

A new articlehas carried out a systematic review of the research looking a chewing gum and attention. The review indicates that a modest majority (14/22) of papers found a positive effect of chewing gum on attention, while a handful of others showed both positive and negative effects (5/22), while a minority showed no significant effect (2/22) or just a negative effect (1/22). The article also points out that the exact mechanism underlying such an effect remains somewhat mysterious, even though numerous theories have been put forward. The literature is not perfect (there could be more positive controls to help untangle mechanisms and effect sizes), but it does seem to suggest a positive effect.

It's an open accessarticle, so it's freely available to anyone who wants to read it.

On a less positive note, I've encountered a recent papersuggesting that excessive chewing gum consumption amongst adolescents could be linked to headaches, so everything in moderation...

P.S. Note also that I've learnt my lesson about pics after the sexism accusation debacle (see previous post on sexism).

Sunday, January 4, 2015

During research towards a Master's degree, I attended a course on research ethics. Early on in the course, we were summarising the nature of our research to one another-the participant describing his work who spoke before me was travelling to Rwanda to conduct research on "The Children of Bad Memories"-children conceived as a result of the rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Following my piece on my own research (the effects of caffeine on cognition), a third participant said she feared my research topic was rather trivial. Notwithstanding the fact that caffeine and cognition is still an active research area, on the day her criticism was understandable, given the inevitable comparison between my research and that of the previous speaker.

A harsher critique is that such "trivial" research may not merely avoid heavier topics, but rather distract from them. Such criticisms have been made by thinkers such as Ian Parker and others in deconstructing psychology and what it, or at least its practice, is "really" about. In the past at least, Parker has been particularly tough on psychology as a whole. At a talk by Parker I saw (a while back in 2007) he advocated a move away from what he referred to as "anti-psychology" towards "non-psychology". This would be a situation where psychology would be replaced by the study of broader social and economic trends that, the logic goes, affect more people in a more tangible way. Even if you don't go as far as this, with fierce competition for research funding, it is understandable that someone seeking money to research Aids may feel shafted if someone down the corridor gets money to look at the common cold or Nutrigrain bars.

However, before we go diverting absolutely all research efforts towards life-threatening illness I would like to make a case for plurality. Using a particular approach to sustain attention is unlikely to have as big an effect on your life as a major trauma. However, even where effect sizes are small, this can still have a large impact at a population level. If caffeine gives you an extra 30 minutes of productive work at whatever it is you do, this may be no great shakes for you today. However, when so many people consume caffeine, if such effects are reliable than this could have very sizeable effects from a bird's eye view. Of course, the challenge then is you need larger sample sizes in order to observe such effects.

Furthermore, it is worth remembering that the fruits of research are often serendipitous. Whether research on less "serious" topics is more or less prone to serendipity is open for debate, although I think one is more likely to fall into "tunnel-vision" when one is researching a topic where the gravity of the topic is obvious from the start. But perhaps you disagree?